International School of Social Work, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China.
Public Health, Policy and Social Sciences, College of Human and Health Sciences, Swansea University, Swansea, UK.
Sociol Health Illn. 2020 Jun;42(5):1184-1201. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.13093. Epub 2020 Apr 16.
We analyse the rise of 'mindfulness' in English language media discourses and contextualise it in terms of its expression of a persistent underlying 'psychological imagination' in contemporary thinking about social problems. An inversion of C. Wright Mills' much-cited sociological imagination, the psychological imagination draws on medical-scientific authority to treat social problems as private concerns rooted in individual biology, mentality and behaviour. We analyse the roles which academic claims-making, commercial interests and mass mediatisation have played in the rise of mindfulness from the late 1970s onwards. We first map the translation of mindfulness from Buddhist philosophy into Western psychotherapy and popular psychology before considering its emergence and expression in the public sphere of news media claims-making. We argue that where the sociological imagination 'promised' above all the treatment of private troubles as public issues and insights into the 'human variety' produced by myriad ways of living, the psychological imagination promises the isolation of public issues as private concerns rooted in individual biology, mentality and behaviour. The psychological imagination permeates the expression of mindfulness as a solution to social ills and symbolises the comparative decline of assumptions implicit in Mills' 20th century rousing call to social scientists.
我们分析了“正念”在英语媒体话语中的兴起，并根据其在当代社会问题思考中表达的一种持续存在的潜在“心理想象”来对其进行定位。这种心理想象颠覆了 C.赖特·米尔斯（C. Wright Mills）颇具影响力的社会学想象力，它利用医学-科学权威将社会问题视为根植于个体生物学、思维和行为的私人关注。我们分析了学术主张、商业利益和大众媒体化在正念从 20 世纪 70 年代末以来兴起过程中所扮演的角色。我们首先在西方心理治疗和大众心理学中对正念从佛教哲学的翻译进行了分析，然后再考虑其在新闻媒体主张的公共领域中的出现和表达。我们认为，社会学想象力“承诺”将私人困扰作为公共问题来处理，并深入了解由无数生活方式产生的“人类多样性”，而心理想象则承诺将公共问题孤立为根植于个体生物学、思维和行为的私人关注。心理想象渗透在正念作为解决社会弊病的方法的表达中，象征着米尔斯（Mills）在 20 世纪唤起社会科学家的呼吁中隐含的假设的相对衰落。
